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How long can HDD survive without power. I have three Samsung HD103SJ HDDs none of them were powered for few years. I took them from RAID 5 array and all of them were functional. Now I tried to make new RAD 5 array but they are death. All of them.

Im not asking about data retention.

I thought maybe some electrolyte capacitor died or some internal batery that helps actuator arm to get in safe position after sudden power off.

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  • There is no single rule that applies to every mechanical drive.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 29, 2015 at 11:39
  • Well I read that Q&A before i made this question, well and there is no answer. They are mainly talking about data retention I am talking about HDD lifetime when is not used.
    – Addman
    Oct 29, 2015 at 11:54
  • If properly stored the device should simply work.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 29, 2015 at 12:07
  • Well it was. In my office at room temperature. Humidity at ~45%. In antistatic case. There was any mechanical shock. At this point there 5 HDDs not working from metioned RAID.
    – Addman
    Oct 29, 2015 at 12:55
  • I agree with Wes below. The fact that none are working now would suggest more that the new setup is wrong/incompatible than the disks actually being dead.
    – Linef4ult
    Oct 30, 2015 at 16:47

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Power has nothing to do with the shelf life of a hard drive. A traditional spinning hard drive does not have a battery or a capacitor to park the heads after a power-off. When the drive loses power the heads simply fly off the outer edge of the platter by centrifugal force and land on a set of pads designed for that purpose. It's a product of physics, not electronics.

So the assumption behind your question is invalid. The answer, without addressing the "data retention" aspect of things, is that a drive will survive without power indefinitely, all other things being equal.

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  • Not quite indefinitely. Eventually the lubricant (rotating platters!) becomes solid or sticky and the drive will no longer spin up.
    – Hennes
    Oct 30, 2015 at 16:46
  • Well, subject to the laws of mechanics yes. But in the context of the way he asked the question it's definitely not the reason his hard drives don't work now.
    – Wes Sayeed
    Oct 30, 2015 at 16:51
  • If it was one drive. Maybe. But all of them? I suspect that is is indeed a compatability issue. Fun detail: written from a desktop with four such drives in a RAID 5 array (HW RAID, 3ware 9750).
    – Hennes
    Oct 30, 2015 at 17:00

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